Matters of the Florence heart

“I am no longer my own master. I am become the slave of a demon. I sit gazing, day after day, on that terrible phantom, the Duke Lorenzo in M. Angelo’s Chapel. All my better feelings would lead me to the Tribune & the lovely forms that inhabit there. I can dwell with delight on the membra formosa of the Wrestlers, the Fawn & the Apollo, on the sunshine of Titian & the soul of Raphael; but the statue loses none of its influence.” (The Englishman Samuel Rogers, writing in the early 19th century, on encountering Michelangelo’s sculpture of Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, in Florence)

Australian/British artist Andrew Nicholls describes a similar experience in these latter days. “I’d only ever seen photos of it,” he says as, somewhat ironically, we stand before a photo of it — Donatello’s bronze statue of David. More precisely, a large-format photograph which includes a blurred image of Nicholls reeling back as the full force of the sculpture’s power hits him.

“And it had made me feel profoundly uncomfortable in a way I’m still embarrassed about,” he continues. “The feminine pose, the fruity hat, it’s so androgynous and weird. Normally, these are things I’d enjoy. But I’d never quite got it.”

Until he finally saw it for the first time in the flesh, so to speak, in 2014. “I went to (Florence’s national museum) the Bargello almost as an afterthought. I looked downstairs and there were these fantastic Michelangelos and other fabulous sculptures. Then I went upstairs and walked into this room.”

And there it was. “As soon as I saw it, I was entranced,” Nicholls says. “I was captivated. From every angle, I thought it was the most fantastic object. It’s now my favourite artwork on the planet.”

The photograph is also one of Nicholls’ favourite artworks in his considerable oeuvre, which spans drawing, ceramics and photography (you may know his impressive ceiling mural at the City of Perth Library).

It forms a triptych of sorts with two other self-portraits — a second shows him in Naples’ archaeological museum, a third before Michelangelo’s tomb in Santa Croce, Florence — which illustrates the phenomenon known as Stendhal Syndrome.

The three works stand at the entrance to Nicholls’ WA Now exhibition, Hyperkulturemia, curated by Robert Cook and featuring drawings, ceramics and photographs made by Nicholls in the past five years, most as the result of a series of residencies in Italy.

“They’re the entry statement before we move into the more erotic, troubling works,” he says. “Lots of nudity, lots of kitschy skulls. Everything really taken from high Catholicism and the Baroque and Rococo aesthetics, which have always been fundamental to my own aesthetic.”

You might also have expected to see above the entrance “Abandon all inhibitions, ye who enter here”.

Hyperkulturemia is another name for Stendhal Syndrome, which describes a condition afflicting viewers overcome by the effects of viewing great art. Nicholls makes great art — meticulously crafted, electric with florid baroque gestures, witty, erotic, quasi-religious — but perhaps the real danger lies in the way it connects with the great art of the past, and with that other troubling cultural phenomenon, The European Grand Tour.

“We owe the tour some of the most sublime aesthetic achievements of the 18th century, yet at the same time as it was informing this remarkable cultural legacy, it was for the most part undertaken by extremely privileged, spoilt youths who were effectively on an extended gap year, travelling for the first time free of their families and the oppressive atmosphere of aristocratic society, with few financial constraints,” Nicholls writes elsewhere.

“Hyperkulturemia works explore this disjuncture between the Enlightenment’s sombre idealisation of Classicism, and the repressed, yet unruly desires of the British aristocracy.”

We stroll through an elegant yet darkly gothic echo of a Renaissance chapel, replete with riffs on Piranesi’s Le Antichita Romane, Michelangelo’s The Last Judgement and more. Confronted by the stark eroticism of Nicholls’ take on the Barberini Faun, you can’t help but be reminded of Bernini’s Ecstasy of St Teresa as well.

“Part of the sensual appeal of Italy is that it had always been viewed, particularly by the British, as this space where you could let yourself go and eroticism and sensuality could come to the fore,” Nicholls says. “It can be cathartic, as in A Room with a View. Or it can be tragic, as in Death in Venice.”

The choice, Nicholls seems to be saying, is ours.

Hyperkulturemia is on at the Art Gallery of WA until April. The exhibition includes full-frontal nudity.